Thanks to the new curriculum, the students of the fourth year of the Medicine career at the National University of Asunción (UNA) carry out their practice on Preventive Medicine with children from the Comprehensive Child Care Center (CAICI) of the Hospital de Clínicas. This was reported from the Hospital’s Department and Pediatric Service. If the results of this new modality are auspicious, attention might be transferred to public schools, according to reports.
Dr. Mirian Ortigoza, undergraduate instructor at the Department of Pediatrics, explained that what is desired with these practices is that eighth-semester students learn how to manage healthy or normal children and help identify those who may present some inconvenience of Health.
She pointed out that the work is carried out in coordination with the teachers and managers of the CAICI, which is a nursery with a school support service for the children of officials and students of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National University of Asunción. It brings together infants between six months and three years of age.
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“We come here to perform a comprehensive physical examination on children, that means that we evaluate not only the part of how the child grows in bodily form, but also the affective, emotional part, the developmental, behavioral or behavior component, the relationship with his immediate environment and with his family”, detailed the pediatrician.
“All this so that students learn what a child is like without a disease, since it must be taken into account that 90% of children are healthy and that, circumstantially, and only 10% of children have some disease that detect”, added Ortigoza.
The pediatrician stressed that what she wants to achieve this first semester is for students to learn and get to know the healthy child from the point of view of primary health care. She said that it is a change in the curriculum and in the way of approaching health, since before this mesh was very pathological.
“It means that students only studied diseases in children, and we need this semester to be regarding health promotion and prevention, that is, to change from curative medicine to preventive medicine,” he said.
He indicated that the teaching methodology is being changed in the course. “We want them to know what the healthy child’s body is, what his needs are, how he behaves, what his emotions are, all this teaching through play,” she said.
He explained that what the students do is a physical exam by playing with the little ones and observing how they respond to what is being stimulated. “Then the students have an integral Coptic of the child, not only how his vascular apparatus is, but how he acts with other people according to his age”, highlighted the professor.
From the Department of Social Communication of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the UNA, they pointed out that if this innovative modality has positive results, the initiative might be transferred to public schools in our country. This would benefit thousands of children who, due to various factors, cannot access medical care, with which it might be preventing and detecting different types of pathologies that might be affecting the child population in vulnerable areas.
For her part, Ms. Roxana Aguayo, in charge of CAICI, thanked for this agreement and the initiative since it is a comprehensive care center where one of the priorities is also to ensure the health of the children who attend the nursery.
“The doors of the center open for these young students embracing this new curriculum. It is very important that they can experience this space that the faculty offers them, where their own classmates bring their children”, he expressed.
He mentioned that, as of January, February and with the arrival of the students, in March, the Comprehensive Child Care Center is working one hundred percent and today has 35 children between the ages of six months and three years. .
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